Soldiers Live (The Black Company)

501 Pages·2010·1.9 MB·English

by  Glen Cook

Annotation
As Soldiers Live opens, no Black Company member has died in battle for
four years. Croaker figures it can't last. He's right.
For, of course, many of the Company's old adversaries are still around.
Narayan Singh and his adopted daughter — actually the offspring of Croaker
and Lady — hope to bring about the apocalyptic Year of the Skulls. Other old
enemies like Longshadow and Howler are also ready to do the Company harm.
And much of the Company is still recovering from the fifteen years many of
them spent in a stasis field.
Then a report arrives of an old enemy newly active again. It attacks them at
a shadowgate — setting off a chain of events that will bring the Company to the
edge of apocalypse and, as usual, several steps beyond.
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Contents
Glen Cook
Soldiers Live
1
An Abode of Ravens:
When No Men Died
Four years passed and no one died. Not of violence or hazard of the calling,
anyway. Otto and Hagop did pass on within days of each other, of natural causes
associated with aging, last year. A few weeks ago one Tam Duc, recruit in
training, perished of the overconfident exuberance of youth. He fell into a
crevasse while he and his lance brothers were riding their blankets down the
long slick slope of the Tien Myuen glacier. There were a few others. But not a
one by an unfriendly hand.
Four years has to be a record, though not the sort often recalled in these
Annals.
That much peace is impossible to believe.
Peace that prolonged becomes increasingly seductive.
Many of us are old and tired and retain no youthful fire in the belly. But us
old farts are not in charge anymore. And though we were prepared to forget
horror, horror was not as accomodating toward us.

In those days the Company was in service to its own name. We recognized
no master. We counted the warlords of Hsien as our allies. They feared us. We
were supernatural, many recalled from the dead, the ultimate Stone Soldiers.
They dreaded the chance that we might take sides in their squabbles over the
bones of Hsien, that once-mighty empire the Nyueng Bao recall as the Land of
Unknown Shadows.
The more idealistic warlords have hopes of us. The mysterious File of Nine
provide arms and money and let us recruit because they hope we can be
manipulated into helping them restore the golden age that existed before the
Shadowmasters enslaved their world so cruelly that its people still call
themselves the Children of the Dead.
There is no chance we will participate. But we permit them the hope, the
illusion. We have to get strong. We have a mission of our own.
By standing still we have caused the blossoming of a city. A once-chaotic
encampment has become ordered and has acquired names, Outpost or the
Bridgehead among those who came from beyond the plain and what translates as
Abode of Ravens amongst the Children of the Dead. The place keeps growing. It
has generated scores of permanent structures. It is in the processing of acquiring
a wall. The main street is being paved with cobblestones.
Sleepy likes to keep everyone busy. She cannot stand a loafer. The Children
of the Dead will inherit a treasure when we finally go away.
2
An Abode of Ravens:
When the Baobhas Sang
Boom! Boom! Somebody hammered on my door. I glanced at Lady. She had
stayed up late last night and so had fallen asleep while studying this evening.
She was determined to discover all the secrets of Hsien magic and to help Tobo
harness the startlingly plentiful supernatural manifestations of this world. Not
that Tobo needed much help anymore.
This world has more real phantoms and marvellous beings hiding in the
bushes and behind the rocks and trees and on the edge of night than any twenty
generations of our own frightened peasants could imagine. They gravitate
toward Tobo as though he is some sort of nightside messiah. Or amusing pet,
maybe.
Boom! Boom! I would have to get off my butt myself. That looked like a
long, hard trek over there.
Boom! Boom! “Come on, Croaker! Wake up!” The door swung inward as
my visitor invited himself inside. The very devil of my thoughts.
“Tobo...”
“Didn’t you hear the baobhas singing?”
“I heard a racket. Your friends are always kicking up a fuss about
something. I don’t pay any attention anymore.”
“When the baobhas sing it means somebody is going to die. And there’s
been a cold wind off the plain all day and Big Ears and Golden-Eye have been
extremely nervous and... it’s One-Eye, sir. I just went over to talk to him. He
looks like he’d had another stroke.”
“Shit. Let me get my bag.” No surprise, One-Eye suffering a stroke. That
old fart has been trying to sneak out on us for years. Most of the vinegar went
out of him back when we lost Goblin.
“Hurry!”
The kid loved that old shit-disturber. Sometimes it seemed like One-Eye
was what he wanted to be when he grew up. In fact, it seemed Tobo venerated
everybody but his own mother, though the friction between them diminished as
he aged. He had matured considerably since my latest resurrection.
“I’m hurrying as fast as I can, Your Grace. This old body doesn’t have the
spring it did in the olden days.”